NORMA in Palermo in the lacci della Devia, in a new production directed by Gabriele Ferro.
Review by Natalia Dantas © dibartolocritic
The myths of the opera must remain so. Especially if still in career. There are trees like the one of Mariella Devia, who always emerge victorious from every challenge. The qualities of his voice, the clarity, the superfine technique, the emission and projection skills seem to have remained intact to this day. Now that the great soprano has long passed sixty springs. Therefore, praise be to those who, like Mariella Devia, possessing a unique instrument, have been able to preserve it with such skill over time.
And’ it is obvious, however, that there must necessarily be a secret in this longevity. The vocal instrument is very delicate and you need to know how to use it, right from the start. The careful and conscious use of one's means, the ability to never force, to sing on the breath and not on the fiber and much, much more, which we are not going to emphasize here, help to preserve the freshness of a voice over time. But what matters a lot is also the repertoire. And in fact, in the case of our diva, the ability not to overdo it, to contain the quality and number of roles faced throughout her career, prudence, vocal intelligence have won.
And here, therefore, for some years, Mariella Devia can afford to be too Norma. A Palermo, February 22, 2017 a big Casta Diva resounded among the historic velvets of the Teatro Massimo: a masterpiece. The finesse, the attacks, the delicacy, the facets, the absolute awareness of one's abilities and limits, have made his cavatina a jewel to boast of today and always.
There is talk of the famous Casta Diva, however. And Norma is not only that. This is a crucial point: many identify Norma only with this cavatina in the first act. But there are hours of singing, after Casta diva. And here the singers often have a difficult life.
The listener, however, often succumbs to the charm of the character and his fame and, in the case of Casta Diva in Palermo, does not notice that, if the famous piece may have aroused unanimous enthusiasm, there were moments in which such enthusiasm ran the risk of being close to shutting down.
Even for a very great one like Devia, in fact, some obstacle stands between intention and perfection. There are musical phrases in the lower part in this part which are almost impossible for certain vocal styles. La Devia has faced and overcome them exclusively with technique.
Now, whether it is worth exposing yourself in such a role by fully appealing only to technical skills is evidently a question to which the famous soprano himself, with his Palermo performance, answered. And he will certainly have taken into account how other components come into play overall: the presence of colleagues not suited to the role, for example, can jeopardize entire parts of the work.
In fact, here we always fall, unfortunately, on the inconsistency of the Adalgisa by Carmela Remigio, a sort of fluttering and inexpressive peasant girl, with questionable vocality, next to a column of bel canto…Column which, however, in turn, in duets, would have needed to have quite another soprano column alongside.
At this point, one cannot avoid pointing out how it seemed at times that one was witnessing not the Norma Adalgisa duets, but unpublished Giulietta Capuleti-Amina duets. La Devia supported Remigio more vocally than scenically and Remigio would have needed both supports; she, in turn, did not provide Devia with the cue to force a little in that pathos a little’ violent, even scenic, which is inherent in Bellini's masterpiece and which the great singer did not catch at times.
But where was it? the Director in these moments? More than having both wrap and unwind laces, i directors Luigi Di Gangi and Ugo Giacomazzi they didn't know how to do. A kind of dance in the duet. Even the divas must be directed on stage and not only from a "choreographic" point of view.
Just as it happened that Norma, who in this production turns to killing her children by suffocating them with a band of cloth, then found herself, in the tenth scene of the second act, in direct contradiction with Romani in the sentence: "Non sai tu che ai sons in core/this iron…/(…) /Yes, above them I raised my point…/You see… you see… what have I come to!…/I didn't hurt, but quickly… now/ I can consume the excess…”. Which iron?
Have the directors read the libretto? Or have thought a little’ too much to the ancestral rites of Sardinia evoked by Maria Lai, with her fairies and the shamanic rites connected to them? The theme of these laces, within the scene noisy and deliberately "artistic event" of Federica Parolini in new staging of the Teatro Massimo in co-production with Arena Sferisterio of Macerata, and i costumes appreciable of Daniela Cernigliaro. All under the lights suggestive of Luigi Biondi.
Therefore, if the directors didn't direct La Devia properly, one would have expected all the more reason that they wouldn't direct John Osborn Pollione. And, instead, they directed him too much, making the proconsul of Rome in Gaul a kind of primate who climbed, who turned to his friend Flavio, the best Manuel Pierattelli, with hazing attitudes, and that he was forced to issue the high notes, with which he is commendably gifted, from the top of a perch of poles with a dubious connotation, given the absence on stage of both the druidic oak and the shield of Irminsul.
Oroveso, Luca Tittoto, with a vocality to be fully exploited, the other interpreters, the choir, directed by Peter Monti, were overwhelmed by the general trend. The choir, in this case, sometimes reduced to primitive movements, was also forced to give full use of their vocal skills of legato/portamento, with the exception, fortunately, of at least the famous "Guerra, Guerra!".
Over all, in fact, reigned the Maestro Gabriele Ferro and the’excellent orchestra of the Palermo theater was forced into times of such slowness, that the same myth from overseas in the 70s of the last century perhaps would not have dared to reach to favor the conjugal chords.
And if the tempos found themselves being stretched to exhaustion like the laces on the stage, the dynamics were uniformed to a sad muted flatness, certainly implemented also in order not to cover the stage: Maestro Ferro had also raised the background of the mystical gulf, bringing out the orchestra at a level just below the proscenium.
The result of all this also appeared as the unthinkable overall search for a Bellinian lyricism that does not exist in this work. That lyricism, on the other hand, which characterizes other works by Bellini in which Devia was excelled in every sense and which inevitably tended to emerge also in Norma's singing. So?
So the Devia event in Palermo seems to have dominated the Norma event. AND’ it is unthinkable that Maestro Ferro did not act purposely and with good reason in such a pregnant and showy agogic intervention.
And then, to conclude, given that sometimes even the Universal is reduced to bowing to the contingent, it is hoped that Bellini, at the moment, at least at times, was distracted by other angelic songs, up there, from the top of that Empyrean where he is seated.
Natalia Dantas © dibartolocritic
PHOTOS © Franco Lannino, © Rosellina Garbo